Manufacture is under way – here is a first peek of Caro Swan’s brilliant cover design

I’m writing this from Washington DC where I’ve just enjoyed a long weekend break with Sue. It’s been an exhausting couple of months work wise for both of us, so a short break before the excitement of Sophie’s wedding at the end of July really kicks in seemed a good idea!

In the meanwhile, the design is nearly finalised for the cover of iPraise – Caro Swan has done her usual excellent stuff – and it should all be ready for manufacture in the next week or so.

While we have been in the US, our good friend, and current part time administrator for FW, Natalie Howard, has been on a trip to Thailand, to spend some time there with friends who are involved in working with projects to help get girls out of street work. Amazingly, it is her first trip abroad, and to have gone to Bangkok following all the recent troubles there certainly took some courage. I’m hoping she’ll write a report for this blog soon.

The final stage before manufacturing is to get the CD mastered, and as with the past few CD’s, we’ve used Denis Blackman from Skye Mastering. He has a brilliant ear, and has mastered too many secular and christian CD’s to count. Design for the CD cover is underway, and we should be on track for a release end June/Early July. We’ll get a preview track or two up soon – I think it is sounding just great, and hope people agree!

Meanwhile, the sun is shining today like mid summer, so being English, our reflex is to get the BQQ out, as rain is never far behind…

In the studio today with Sophie and Sarah, who are adding some great lead vocals and BV’s to a number of tracks. They have both been on FW recordings since they were small children, so it’s great to have them on this one as fine young ladies!

Then Tim Boniface will add some live brass parts (sax and trumpet) to “Pass it on” on Monday, which I am really looking forward to – he is an amazing player.

That will be all the recording finished, and then Tom & Steve will finish mixing pretty soon. All sounding great – I am really pleased with what they have done.

Well, the children and teenagers did a great job. Around 30 came along to sing, and they got through 8 songs in the day, which was a brilliant effort. Just some BV’s and brass to record, then the mix can be finished. Getting close…

One of the best bits of doing a recording is getting a children’s choir together. They add great energy to the overall sound of the songs, and make the recording accessible to children.

The children’s choir will feature on around 8 out of the 12 tracks, and we’ll be recording them all day this Saturday (23 Jan).

Then, in the evening, we’ll have an adult choir add some vocals to some of the tracks as well, to make the recording truly all-age!

Jamie Muir, regular guitarist with us on Roadshows, popped down to the studio this week to record some guitars, and from what I hear, it was a great session.

Lead vocals are being recorded next week. I’ll be down on the Tuesday and Thurdsay, with Chris Juby making the trek all the way from Durham also on Thursday.

We have also sneaked in a last minute addition – a brand new all-age song from friend and writer Chris Orange.

May post a rough MP3 or two before Christmas; things will go on hold then until the New Year, when we’ll be getting more vocals down, including the all-important children’s choir.

I’m writing this post from a beach in the Caribbean – Jamaica to be precise – where Sue, Josie and I have come for a friend’s wedding, which took place yesterday. It was a wonderful day, and a great celebration.

At the same time this week, my thoughts are back in the UK and the south coast in particular, where Tom Mills and Steve Harding have begun work on the next FW recording – “iPraise”. This album has been a long time coming, but I’m very excited as now feels exactly the right time to be recording, and I am really looking forward to working with Tom & Steve and seeing what they come up with. As usual, we have provided some very rough stones by the way of elementary demos of the songs, and I am sure they will polish up a diamond or two…

As well as a number of new songs (including a couple from Chris Juby, and one from Anju Ebanks), we’ll be covering one or two FW favourites, like “Dance on the streets” and “I will lift up the name of the Lord” – songs which we use live regularly, and which warrant a 21st century makeover in terms of arrangements. Should be fun to hear how things shape up.

We appreciate your prayers as always – we are hoping this recording will be full of power and passion for praise, and especially that it will inspire all ages, including the rising generation, to be whole-hearted worshippers.

Watch this space…
Mike

since I posted anything – sorry!

Much of this year has been spent dealing with the sudden death of my Dad in May. As sad and heavy as that has been, our current focus is now totally joyful and light – our eldest daughter, Beckie, is getting married to Matt this Saturday (22 August). Congratulations to them both!

In June, after 6 months training, fulfilling a long-held ambition to increase my general fitness and decrease my general fatness, I climbed the UK’s 3 highest peaks in Scotland, England and Wales. Details here.

On the ministry front, we had a great time at Revive this year; Sophie is off again to Zimbabwe this month, and plans for “iPraise” are back on track after the turbulence of the past few months.

Sue & I hope you had a great summer (if it’s been summer where you live) – I will make an effort to post something before several more months fly by…

Mike

When we started the FW site, about 10 years ago, one of the first (and easiest) decisions we made was to make all of the songs available for download for free. This included MP3 files, backing tracks, lyrics, guitar chords and sheet music. As a small, relatively unknown, non-profit ministry, it seemed to me to be a very effective way to get the songs out, and it has been an exciting journey ever since, seeing where the songs have ended up.

Of course we do also record and sell CD’s of the songs (7 so far), and we have been assisted in that process by long-term partner, ICC Records, who act as our publisher and distributor. As we plan for the next FW recording, ICC have made a request that we stop making the FW songs freely available, as they feel that it detracts from selling CD’s, and songbooks/sheet music. They also suggest that with CD sales down in general, in the secular and christian “markets”, making the songs and albums available on iTunes is a better approach than making them available for free.

In other words, if you wanted to get hold of one of our songs in future, you may need to pay 79p (or 99 cents) for the song, and maybe £1.49 for the sheet music. My worry is that while some people may be happy to pay that, and so support the FW ministry (which I stress again is a non-profit ministry), and also support ICC who are themselves a charitable company, others may be put off and not get to hear or use the songs.

So, before making a decision on their request, I wanted to get some feedback from visitors to this site, and if you have a moment to send me an email with your frank thoughts, comments and suggestions on this tricky subject, then I would be very grateful.

Thank you!
Mike